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There are many Goas, and I wonder if I can remember them all. The Goa at the swarming Colva Beach, where a little shack looks over Indian populace in bundled up salwar kameez. Fluorescent orange stands brighter than the sun. There is a Goa in the rain. Seawater lashing narrow roads, and sarongs dripping off salt. A Goa where the song and dance never end. Bodies clung together at Titos, and Cape Cod, and Kamakazi and other such queer names.


There is the ordinary picture of a Goa with the sun. Languishing on beach beds, watching the sea roar, and nibbling on French Fries. And there is a Goa where I almost didn’t see the sea, desperately following the smell, one last rainy morning onto a sandy beach. A Goa in a resort, where I spent an entire week holed up in a hotel room, with a swimming pool. Collecting shells on the beach. Reading by the sand, under a night sky. And, when I was young, use free hotel-room matchsticks to burn ants by the sill.


There is a Goa where the swimming pool meets the sea. A Goa with secrets, a Goa without stories. Where you breakfast at Infantaria, tell me you’ve been there. The prawns cooked in recheado masala, and the crunchy and well-balanced date and chocolate tart are worth an arm and a leg for. There is Curlies, where my head always throbs to the tune of mindless teenage trance. The glimpse of the sea is unimaginable though. Which reminds me of a Goa at the village. The exotic, otherworldly five-star Goa nestled among other places at the Taj Holiday Village. I remember chasing Saching Tendulkar for an autograph; I remember the cricket-hero romancing his then fiancé.


Suddenly, I cannot remember another Goa. Oh yes, Panjim City and the church, Brittos and cashew nuts and Feni. Drinking in the sea-air, and drinking; I can remember the giggle-fest one January early morning. How many places that you have not grown up in, have watched you grow up?


Goa, I had forgotten how you stir my soul.